The Fighters are still looking for a pitcher for the final spot in the rotation, likely behind Yu Darvish, Masaru Takeda, Tomoya Yagi, Buddy Carlyle, and Bobby Keppel. Tsuchiya does have some competition though: Kazuhito Tadano, Keisuke Itokazu, and Mitsuo Yoshikawa.

...Darvish's next start will come on the 6th against the Yakult Swallows. As such, he held a bullpen session on Thursday. According to pitching coach Takeshi Shimazaki, he'll go about 6 innings and throw 70-80 pitches. While the Fighters would like to stretch Darvish out to about 90 pitches, they also have to give their relievers a chance to show what they've got.

...While Nashida may have been happy with Wolfe's outing, he wasn't entirely happy with the team's defense. In the fourth, Eiichi Koyano and Yoshio Itoi both made errors that led to 2 unearned runs. There were two solid plays in the 7th (a diving catch by Atsunori Inaba) and the 9th (Itoi threw out a runner home) though.